MAGA Turns Its Wrath on Justice Barrett — but She Is Forming a Dynamic Duo With Chief Justice Roberts

Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s vote this week to reject President Trump’s freeze on foreign aid could signal a new era in the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence — one that she could help shape alongside Chief Justice Roberts.The two justices joined with the high court’s liberals in upholding a district judge’s order that the administration begin repaying global health groups nearly $2 billion for completed work. That prompted dismay from Justice Samuel Alito, who pronounced himself “stunned” by the majority’s failure to ensure that the “power entrusted to federal judges by the Constitution is not abused.” That ire is radiating outward from Justice Alito’s hushed chambers. One of Mr. Trump’s legal counselors, Mike Davis — who clerked for Justice Neil Gorsuch — calls Justice Barrett “a rattled law professor” and “weak and timid.” A conservative influencer, Laura Loomer, declares that Justice Barrett “was a DEI appointee” because Mr. Trump chose a woman to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. The Sun spoke to a legal scholar, Joshua Blackman, who is calling for Justice Barrett to resign from her lifetime appointment. Mr. Blackman discloses that he “has been on Justice Barrett’s case for four years” and that she has “done nothing to demonstrate her qualifications.” Mr. Blackman assails Justice Barrett for lacking a “judicial philosophy” and laments that she is “not a very productive justice” who has “lost her way” on the highest court in the land. Mr. Blackman notes that Justice Barrett has yet to release a book for which she signed a $2 million contract in 2021. The Sun reached out to the Supreme Court for comment but did not hear back by the time this article went to print.Mr. Blackman also references footage from Mr. Trump’s address this week to a joint session of Congress that appears to show Justice Barrett looking with disdain at the president who nominated her to America’s highest court. Mr. Trump can be heard telling Chief Justice Roberts, “Thank you again. Thank you again. Won’t forget.” The 47th president later explained that he was referring to his swearing in on Inauguration Day. Justice Barrett acceded to the highest court during Mr. Trump’s first term after serving for three years on the Seventh United States Appeals Circuit. She finished first in her class at the University of Notre Dame Law School, where she would later join the faculty after clerking for two conservative legal lions, Judge Laurence Silberman and Justice Antonin Scalia.There is a history of judges with backgrounds steeped in the right drifting from those commitments over time. Chief Justice Warren, who was a Republican governor of California appointed by President Eisenhower, presided over the high court’s liberal salad days. Justice David Souter, who was named to the bench by President George H.W. Bush, evolved into a reliable liberal. Justice John Paul Stevens owed his perch to President Ford, and yet his 35 years on the bench yielded a heterodox record that saw him land on the left.Mr. Blackman ventures to the Sun that the justice many take to be the court’s most influential liberal — Justice Elena Kagan —appears to be working to ensure, via subtle opinion writing stratagems, that Justice Barrett’s trajectory mirrors Justice Souter’s. Another possibility, Mr. Blackman reckons, is that Justice Barrett’s career on the bench comes to resemble that of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, another Republican appointee who came to be seen as a conciliator.Justice Barrett and Chief Justice Roberts appear, in any event, to have hit on some judicial synergy. In addition to uniting to swing the decision on aid that so infuriated Justice Alito, they also in January joined together, in another 5-to-4 decision, to block a sentencing hearing in Mr. Trump’s criminal hush money case in New York. That hearing eventually occurred, though Judge Juan Merchan granted Mr. Trump an unconditional discharge.Justice Barrett, in the last Supreme Court term that ended in July, was the conservative justice most likely to vote for an outcome that could be construed as liberal. She did, though, join the court’s majority in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Initiative, which reversed Roe v. Wade. She also joined Chief Justice Roberts’s majority opinion in Trump v. United States, which mandated that official presidential acts are presumptively immune. Even in that decision, though, Justice Barrett signaled that she was not in lockstep with the majority. She wrote that she would not have gone as far as they did in extending the protection of immunity also to evidence. She reckoned that “the Constitution does not require blinding juries to the circumstances surrounding conduct for which Presidents can be held liable.”

MAGA Turns Its Wrath on Justice Barrett — but She Is Forming a Dynamic Duo With Chief Justice Roberts

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